Meadows LDNAMETOPICYEARRECIDIVISMDrug courts do not solve. They have no impact on redicivists. (Morris Hoffman writes,) Drug courts don't work; They turn neutral judges into cheerleaders, substitute parents. BYLINE: Morris Hoffman SECTION: EDIT; Pg. 11A LENGTH: 361 wordsURL: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v08/n961/a09.htmlPubdate: Tue, 21 Oct 2008 Source: USA Today (US)Independentevaluations of drug courts have been mixed, but manyshow that drug courts have no, or very little, impact on re-arrest recidivism. In Denver, for example, where I sit as a trial judge, an evaluation of our drug court done by the insiders who ran it claimed enormous reductions in recidivism. Butwhen independentevaluators from the University of Denver looked at the program, theyfound that it reduced recidivism from a depressing 58% down to a still depressing 53%. Even that 5-point drop was well within the study's margin of error. But it's not just that drug courts don't work, or don't work well.They have the perverse effect of sending more drug defendants to prison, becausetheir poor treatment results get swamped by an increase in the number of drug arrests. By virtue of a phenomenon social scientists call "net-widening," theveryexistence of drug courts stimulates drug arrests. Police are no longer arresting criminals, they are trolling for patients. Denver'sdrug arrestsalmost tripled in the two years after we began our drug court. At the end of those two years, we were sending almost twice the number ofdrug defendants to prison than we did before drug court.2

Meadows LDNAMETOPICYEAR3

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Meadows LDNAMETOPICYEARJUDGES Drug courts turn judges into cheerleaders and because of this their role is diminished. Morris Hoffman writes,Drug courts don't work; They turn neutral judges into cheerleaders, substitute parents. BYLINE: Morris Hoffman SECTION: EDIT; Pg. 11A LENGTH: 361 wordsURL: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v08/n961/a09.htmlPubdate: Tue, 21 Oct 2008 Source: USA Today (US)Drug courts also turn judges from neutral magistrates into a combination of treatment cheerleader and substitute parent. When we try to treataddiction either as a simple disease or a matter of criminal choice, and drug users as moral inpatients, the only thing we accomplish is tocreate a dangerous and untrained judiciary that thinks it can intrude into the lives of citizens for as long as it takes to cure them. As a statefelony trial judge, I understand the scourge of drugs as well as anyone. But trying to cover up our national schizophrenia over drug policywith the veneer of ineffective, evencounterproductive, drug courts does no good, except perhaps to make judges feel better when we send ourtreatment failures to prison.

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